The present invention relates to a voice input/output (I/O) system for multiple channels.
A voice I/O system disclosed, for example, in FIG. 1 of the British Pat. No. 974,850, published in November, 1964, includes a speech recognition device 3 and an acoustical response generator 4 for one user's channel. As a result, the whole construction becomes bulky and complicated when such an I/O system is provided in one-to-one correspondence to a plurality of users' channels.
In general, each user does not speak to the system when a voice response is made to him. Therefore, when the voice output operation is being performed, the recognition device becomes idle, because processing for recognition is not needed during such voice output operation. It follows that the number of input channels of the recognition unit can be increased by carrying out recognition processing for the other channels during such idle time. However, if the number of input channels is merely increased, there may arise a situation where requests are made for recognition processing from a greater number of input channels than the recognition unit is capable of processing concurrently. Accordingly, the recognition unit may fail to perform the recognition processing resulting in disconnection or repetition of the voice input.